Thursday, October 27, 2011

Due to it was impossible to find a German-English translator and to avoid overlap with the next stage of the martini kisser casting, here you can see (in german language) an interview to David Gandy by Jessica Weiss from LES MADS on September 7, 2011.

Some people are born great, some people achieve greatness, and some people are so fucking gorgeous that something would have to go quite seriously wrong for greatness not to be on the menu somewhere along the line. Yes, I’m talking about David Gandy.

Striding about a blisteringly hot north London studio (he doesn’t walk, he strides, as you might do if you’re 6ft 4in and then some). David Gandy is wearing a calf-lenght wool topcoat by Dolce & Gabbana with some sort of fluffy lapels, trousers and boots. While we are all sweating unphotogenically like weightlifters’ arse cracks, David Gandy is buff and matt and dry, unflagging, professional and calm.

“The only place I ever sweat is my shins”, he says. The man is clearly a freak of nature.

Downstairs in the bar an hour or so later, drinking a Corona (despite the carbs!), David is dress-down delicious in something grey and loose-fitting so you can see the definition in his pecs and a lot of nice brown arm, some jeans and… I don’t really look below the knee. His hair is a loose concoction of oiled curls, his smile whiter than a tennis shock in an Ariel commercial and his skin the kind of caramel colour that makes you want to reach out and bite. But let’s not get carried away. He still looks like a human being, just the most beautiful one you’ve ever seen. Someone earlier described him as looking like a racehorse, and you certainly know what they mean.

“I don’t particularly like mush of my body. I’m very critical of myself“, he says. At which point I tell him off in the name of all ordinary-looking people. “I think I’m pretty much a perfectionist in anything I do so I’m never really going to be happy”, he adds. “I’m not saying it’s a good thing, believe me. People can criticize me and try to bring me down but I tell them, “You can’t be as hard on me as I am on myself, so don’t even try.””

It’s probably the attitude, probably inherited from hard-working parent who went from nothing to running several highly successful businesses, that has got Gandy where he is today: at the very top of the model heap with several fingers in several pies. Because while most male models think of the job of travelling the world, wearing clothes, standing still and walking along something to do while you’re thinking of something better to do, Gandy has taken his perfectionism and his work ethic and made it the thing to do.

“If I wasn’t like that then I wouldn’t be where I am”, he confirms, explaining that he had a nice little earner going in the word of catalogue modeling but decided he wanted more: he wanted to work with the best stylist and photographers in the world, wanted to travel first class and not economy – just wanted things to be better. “Catalogues is where a lot of models earn their money”, he explains. “And the photographer gets exactly the same thing whoever they hire. They don’t give a shit about the creative side of it and I don’t want to do that anymore. That’s why, with the help of Select [his model agency] and Dolce & Gabbana, I turned the whole thing around to where we are today”

Where we are today – just to recap – is a pretty much the only male supermodel in the world with an iconic campaign (the one in the boat in the white swimsuit), a contract with Martini, another with Dolce & Gabbana, which means he doesn’t have to go around knocking on doors any more. Then there’s a celebrity girlfriend in the shape of Mollie from The Saturdays, a couple of high-scoring apps and writing gigs for the likes of Vogue and GQ, for which he’s the motoring correspondent. But then that’s what you have to do if you’re a man working in modeling: while women at his level – Gisele Bündchen, for instance – are pulling in up to £20 million a year for looking pouty over their shoulders, the men don’t earn anything like those amounts and have to come up with plans b, c and d.

And though it may seen to normal-looking human beings that likes to Gandy have it made with their height and their muscles and their noses and their skin, he was in fact somewhat at odds with the prevailing shape and size of thing on men’s fashion when he first won a modeling competition on This Morning after a flat mate entered him by sending in a photo without his knowledge. When they phoned up to tell him he was through to the final he didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

“I came into the industry when the look was very androgynous”, he says, chugging his beer. “Guys were very skinny. My mate [photographer] Mariano [who did the Attitude shoot] always used to try to get me on every shoot, but…”The turning point came with Dolce & Gabbana: already famous for preferring and old-school female figure, one with tips and burn ant tits, they though it was high time good old-fashioned masculinity made a return, one that included height, girth and brooding handsomeness.

“The changed industry at the end of the day with Light Blue”, he says of the boat/white swimwear ad that is still Gandy’s most famous moment. “And the whole industry followed. Fashion does follow a trend, and that trend of masculine came around, and then Calvin Klein brought back white pants all of a sudden and they brought out the Man fragrance for the big guy and the very masculine type. That’s not a coincidence. People see that the trend is changing and they try to jump on board as well. It’s a nice balance at the moment between masculine guys and the younger skinny guys”.

But to get there he had to take a risk, and that risk was giving up his work as an everyday catalogue model, turning down money, saying no to offers and generally saving himself up for editorial work rather than the commercial stuff paid the bills. “People think it was very easy and I was handed something, but even with Dolce & Gabbana, it’s not like they came to me. Tanya from my agency came up with the idea at Mariano’s birthday party and Domenico and Stefano [Dolce & Gabbana] were going to be there and they saw me and apparently said: “Beautiful! That’s amazing!” and then the Light Blue campaign came along. There’s no such thing as luck. You make your own luck. I’d gone the complete opposite to everyone else. I was just waiting for that opportunity, and we’ve worked together ever since”.

As for the old clichés about the modeling world – the exploination, the casting couch, the drugs, the debauchery – it seems that most of that is not as we imagine. “I’ve never experienced the casting couch”, he says. “I’ve been going 10 years, and I’m sure it happens with modelling as well as acting, but I’ve never experienced that. With drugs, what industry doesn’t have drugs? The stereotype of a model is you don’t eat, you take drugs and you sleep with people to get jobs and you earn £10000 a day and you’re an arrogant shit and your career lasts five years. There’s also an assumption that if you’re a model, you’re gay. I’ve been in the industry 10 years and I know only one, maybe two gay guys working”.

But hopefully we’ve established by now that Gandy isn’t your stereotypical model. He’s an Essex lad (but not TOWIE sort of Essex. Rural, lovely Essex) who went to University in Cheltenham to study multimedia computing and marketing (and sort of regrets it), studied photography at art college and worked for Auto Express magazine driving cars to tracks for them to be tested. The whole modelling thing does seen to have been some lucky accident.

You can’t help but wonder, coming from a high-achieving family who made it big in business, whether all his successes are comprehensible to his family. Do they wonder if he’s ever going to get a ’proper job’? “No, because my life is my life and my dad is very proud of what I’ve achieved”, he says. “I’m not just a model now. We have gone beyond that. There are better-looking guys than me, there are more intelligent guys than me, but they seem to have accepted the level that they’re got to and then said: “That’s it”. And I’ve always queried that and asked why? Why can’t you go beyond that? And well, here we are now, we’re doing it”.

If you ask him where he takes it from here, he as a businessman’s natural caginess. Acting? He’s not ruling it out. Presenting on Top Gear? That could be great. But he won’t be nailed down, saying that if someone had asked him five years ago where he was going, he never would have guessed he’d be there, celebrating his decade in the business as the most high-profile male model since Marcus Schenkenberg, or maybe Madonna’s ex, Tony Ward, currently proving that you can be well into your 40s and be quite heavily illustrated in terms of tattoos, and still earn a decent living.

As far as keeping the body in rocking shape for the job, Gandy dismisses any idea of magic formulas or massive self-denial, holding up his bottle of beer to make the point. “It’s not hard”, he says. “Anything that is while and processed and comes in plastic is not good for you. Everyone knows that. And if you don’t buy rubbish, you can’t eat rubbish. In my fridge I’ll have chicken and houmous, high-protein stuff, and no rubbish at all. But that doesn’t mean I won’t have a drink if I want one”.

With exercise he reckons it’s all about tricking clever muscles by surprising then with different exercises. It’s why he’s currently working on a new exercise app which will work something like and iPod shuffle so you get a random – or seemingly random – set of exercises to keep your muscles guessing at all times.

As for the downsides of having one of the most recognizable faces in the world, Gandy reckons there aren’t many, though he does hate the sort of intrusion you get from the press, especially when you’re going out with one of the country’s best-known pop stars.

“When people take pictures they don’t know the whole story”, he says, explaining how there were even pictures of his girlfriend crying after coming back from a funeral with some made-up story to explain her tears. “Even when you ask them not to take pictures and be very honest with them, they still carry on, and that to me is a disgusting way of making money, Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people will have a PR who will use it, but look at the News of The World – what lengths did they go to?”.

As we get up to go – me off for more drinks, him upstairs to go over the photographs he’s been doing for Attitude – he snakes my hand in a very manly way, looks me in the eye, thanks me. Very professional, very impressive, almost old-fashioned in his formality. He knows what works, which is why – even without the height and the skin and the nose and the eyebrows – there’s very little doubt that David Gandy wouldn’t have got to the top of whatever tree he decided to climb. He’s just that sort of a person.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Personal interview to Stuart Broad by David Gandy can be read in the following
link: Life in the fast lane with Stuart Broad by David GandyStuart Broad, 25, is England's Twenty20 cricket captain. And his good form with both bat and ball this summer helped England become the top Test match team in the world. Currently single, he has previously dated Miss England Laura Coleman and former Grange Hill actress Kacey Barnfield. ES asked its guest editor David Gandy to interview him…

David Gandy's diaryBy David Gandy

7 Oct 2011 (ES Magazine)

I've just come back from taking one of those holiday things I keep hearing people talk about. My breaks usually include very little downtime and some sort of unnecessary danger: skiing and crashing down mountains, trekking to see a 25-stone gorilla, or whitewater rafting down the crocodile-infested Zambezi. However, this trip was to the Gandy family holiday home in Florida. The only danger there is the 90-year-old ladies who have shrunk so much that they can't see over the steering wheel of their huge Cadillacs. After an irritable couple of days cold turkey with my BlackBerry switched off, I finally relaxed into the lifestyle of the Gulf Coast. I even started chatting, smiling and making conversation with complete strangers… very un-London-like.

In Florida I had time to get back into running every morning. I ran the London Marathon in April for Oxfam and it sounds a strange thing to say, but it's nice finally to have my toenails back. I lost five of them during the race… shoes weren't to blame, more the fact that I cramped up at 19 miles and had to run (well, hobble, sob and moan) the last seven miles with my toes curled under, finishing in what can only be described as an Apollo Creed (from Rocky) moment, exhausted and shouting, 'Ain't gonna be no rematch!' but will there be? My time of 4½ hours grinds me to this day, but the thought of months of midwinter training, physio, chiro, stretching, losing weight and another 26 miles isn't exactly appealing right now.

At 16, I found myself slumped over the keyboard of a beige BBC Electron computer while its latest program worked out the best career path for me. I remember it clearly instructing me that my immense talent and charisma (seriously) would be best put to use working as an editor. Ignoring it, I took a different path - modelling - and 16 years later, here I am guest editing ES Magazine's men's issue.

The word 'guest' conjures up visions of plumped-up cushions, freshly poured cups of tea and sitting around not doing much more than eating biscuits while everyone else does the work for you. Thankfully, this wasn't the case. No sooner had I agreed to take part than I found myself, sitting with the editor, pondering a trend piece on men having colonics, who my top three cover stars would be and swapping creative ideas on how the issue would come to life and have my stamp on it.

I'm hugely proud to be British. I know it must seem that Italy has adopted me, what with my work for Dolce & Gabbana and now the 'Luck is an attitude' competition I helped launch with Martini in Rome. However, I live in London, drink copious amounts of tea, drive a Jaguar and now I'm one of the new faces of M&S (OK, so it's for the Collezione campaign and was shot in Italy, but, honestly, that had nothing to do with me). Surely you can't get more British than that.

After the recent riots and subsequent bad press internationally, I really wanted to emphasise the 'Great' in Great Britain and make this a 'Best of British' issue. I also wanted to focus on men's style. There is limited fashion advice for men out there, but in this issue we demonstrate the enduring appeal of the three-piece suit, by recreating some iconic and supremely stylish films. And there's always time for car talk, so Colin Goodwin recommends the best new cars and the best British roads on which to thrash, I mean drive, them. Of course, it wouldn't be a men's issue without some beautiful women and Nathalie Bomgren is one of the most stunning I've ever known. She also happens to be one of the most sought-after personal trainers in Europe. If ever you needed an incentive to get to the gym, she is it. Comedy actor Neil Grainger makes me laugh hysterically and don't ask me why, but he once showed me his bum, so who better to write about a colonic at one of London's top spas?

Last but not least is the cover star. If you didn't know who Stuart Broad was before this summer, you will now. An England cricket captain at 25 (for Twenty20), part of The Ashes-winning and now number one team in the world, an astonishing bowler and accomplished batsman, and 6ft 6in with movie-star looks, he is a great guy and a perfect ambassador for Britain. He also drives a Jaguar, but that is where our similarities end.

Being guest editor has been a busy time and I was happily made to feel part of the team, more than an indulged guest. This was never more apparent than at the cover shoot in Deptford last week when Stuart was offered a cup of tea and I wasn't. I glanced up from choosing a biker jacket for his first shot and for a very short moment I missed being on the other side of the camera... but really, I wouldn't have had it any other way. I have thoroughly enjoyed the hard work, creative input and fun I have experienced and now it's back to the day job. I'll savour every sip of those cups of tea I'm made from now on.

Monday, October 3, 2011

David Gandy is undoubtedly one of the biggest success stories of the male modelling world. Rising up from Essex he’s gone onto the highest echelons of the fashion world, after his friends entered him into a daytime television modelling competition. Since then he has modelled for luxury labels and featured in top editorials worldwide, not to mention those infamous Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue ads. We spoke to the 31-year-old model about his latest venture, a book documenting his stylish success, entitled David by Dolce & Gabbana.

LDNfashion: Your new book comes courtesy of Dolce & Gabbana – a little bit of an honour! How are you feeling about it all?

David: Good. I probably view the book in a bit of different manner to how other people do. People probably just view it as a collection of what I’ve done over the last 6 years, but for me it’s like a book of complete and utter memories. Every picture has a story behind it for me so its lovely. From Dolce & Gabbana and the Light Blue stuff, how that sort of started, and when I started to get big and all of that, then to the underwear campaign, then the next Light Blue campaign and the calendar. It’s lovely to have everything kind of under one thing, to have all those memories together.

LDNfashion: So it’s more than just a collection of a pictures of you semi-naked then?

David: (Laughs) Yeah, they’re not all semi-naked!

LDNfashion: Obviously you’re doing really well in the world of modelling – was that what you always wanted to do or did you have other plans?

David: Well I fell into modelling when I won a modelling competition, my friends from uni sent in some pictures of me for the This Morning competition and so I won that while I was in my last year at university. My degree was coming to it’s end and I didn’t really know what to do and it was a bit of an adventure I suppose. When I started we [Gandy and his employers/PR company] thought about where we could really take it if we wanted to, so we set the boundaries very very high to see what we could achieve, and on some of the achievements I’ve worked with people pretty pretty high up and accomplished a lot. We’ve kind of surpassed everything we ever wanted to do.

I always wanted to be a vet, then I realised that would be really difficult, then I worked for a motoring magazine between school and university on my year off, which is something I still do now as I work for GQ Magazine as their car correspondent. So I would’ve gone somewhere along those lines – maybe a motoring journalist or probably working with animals or something like that.

LDNfashion: Since you’ve been modelling you’ve been in the public eye a lot more. Do you still think of yourself as a model or ‘David Gandy the celebrity’?

David: I don’t really like using the word ‘celebrity’. I don’t really like using that word anyway because I picture the kind of people from Celebrity Big Brother. I didn’t go out to be in the public eye, I went out to achieve something in modelling and it just happened – you get recognition for that. I see it more as like a brand, like a ‘David Gandy branding’ now. People associate me with things, like when you hear ‘David Gandy’ you instantly associate me with Dolce & Gabbana and with style.

Everyone now in the modelling world is using actors, celebrities and people in the public eye so you can’t really just be ‘a model’ anymore. You have to compete with the top actors and everyone else. Think about all the top fragrances out – we have to compete people like Ryan Reynolds, so you have to have something different.

LDNfashion: So you’ve got the career, the book – what’s next?

David: It’s difficult to say really – that’s the beautiful thing about being in the industry. I get bored so easily, I’m pretty terrible with that, but there’s so many doors and I’ve got even more projects coming up. I’ve got the book, the iPhone application came out last year, the style guide and now we’re doing another iPhone app around fitness and nutrition. I’m writing for Vogue – I’m the number one new blog on Vogue – and I’m doing the car stuff for GQ who have asked me to do even more now. Today it’s my day off and I’ve been editing ES Magazine (The Evening Standard’s stylish insert), the men’s edition, which will be out next Friday.

I did a short film last year with Helena Christensen, which I enjoyed, so there’s a future there. I’ve started my own production company as well making short films and all the applications are going through the production company. It’s a busy time, but I’ve surpassed the modelling already in some ways.

LDNfashion: Is there anything you’d like to do which you haven’t yet?

David: I’ve had offers of films, but if an offer of something really really good came up, even it was just one film that I wanted to do I would really get me teeth into that. That’d be quite interesting, but there’s lots to do and lots to achieve. There’s a couple of covers that I’ve got coming up over in America, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m known in America, but everything I’ve achieved over here surrounding the ‘David Gandy branding’, which is all a bit London and Europe based, now I want to see if I can do the same thing over there.

LDNfashion: You work in the fashion industry – how would you describe your personal style? Do you think you have one?

David: I probably do. It’s difficult because women have the choice of skirts, dresses, everything, men really have just jeans, shorts – that kind of thing. I’ve always gone down the tailoring route, so I have wardrobes and wardrobes of Dolce & Gabbana suits, Thom Sweeney suits and three-pieces. Occasions for me are always like working so I kind of mix two things together – I’m very traditional, but then I really want to modernise up. I love vintage stuff, so it’s an eclectic mix of everything really. I want to be modern, but like to be traditional, like wearing jeans with a waistcoat and a jacket with a tie. I don’t know if you could call that a style really, maybe like ‘shabby chic’, or ‘traditional chic’ – something like that.

LDNfashion: Do you have any favourite brands or shops?

David: I’m really lucky that everything from Dolce & Gabbana is made to fit me, but probably recently the best suit I’ve bought is from a tailors called Thom Sweeney, they’re the best at tailoring. There some exciting young guys in Mayfair in London.

LDNfashion: You’re originally from Essex, which is now well-known thanks to The Only Way Is Essex. Did you ever think you’d make it so big coming from a place that was relatively unknown when you started out?

David: I don’t think coming from Essex ever holds anyone back. It’s amazing how many successful people are actually from Essex, like Lee Evans, Jamie Oliver and other models like Paul Scolfer. I don’t think things like The Only Way Is Essex do anyone any favours really. I haven’t really seen it, but what I gather from it shows people the exact cliche of what people thought Essex would be.

LDNfashion: For those people who have never been to Essex where would you recommend visiting?

David: My parents are from the Essex/Suffolk coast, up in a place called the Colne Valley and it’s absolutely stunning. I’d head up there – I’m kind of a country guy and the countryside is stunning. All the cliches of Essex are completely broken there.

David Gandy by Dolce & Gabbana is available to buy in Dolce & Gabbana stores now.